Friday, February 25, 2011

Advise

A girl in my English class was asking my professor for advice about her boyfriend so my professor goes on a 10 minute rant regarding advice from others.

She says something like this, "Stop, stop this for your own good. If you let other people give you advice, whether its bad or good you are giving up what make you YOU. Why cant you understand that every choice you make is a string that pulls on other strings. Why do you want others to pull those strings for you, even if its indirect. Make your own choices, your own mistakes and learn from them. Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make; you can destroy your life every time you choose.

Then i argue to her, "Asking for advice gives you several different perspectives on a matter that allow you to see it from various different angles than what you, yourself can think up of. Following advice blindly is stupid, yes, but obtaining advice to consider and see how it fits into the equation is not."

And my teacher says, " Im giving you a wake up call not advice. Im just asking you to be yourself, and you say NO I'd rather be someone else. Everyone is somebody but nobody wants to be themselves. The worst advice someone can give you is to ask for advice. "

So i reply to her, "So you are giving me advice about not taking others' advice..."

HAHA! How i just love my English class, the only class that wakes me up in the mornings.

20 comments:

I often find at work when Im having a problem and keep trying to figure it out, I look at it in the same ways, the more and the longer you look at it it seems the more you attack the problem with blinders on. By asking for an opinion you get a fresh view that you may not see and you just might just say "thanks I never looked at it that way"

That woman thinks she knows what she's saying. She doesn't. She's got this idea that she's super independent and no body can tell her what to do, so she passes that on to others. It's foolish. Advice is good, but I agree with you that following it blindly is a huge mistake.